The generosity of Waynesville farmer Gene Christopher has allowed the Haywood Gleaners to gather, box and deliver more than 4,000 pounds of apples to the food insecure of Haywood County in the past month. 

Updated: 2/19/20 10:30 a.m

Jody Vance Jones, 26, of Clyde, has been charged with murdering his father Marion Jones and for attempting to murder his brother Hunter Jones. There is no bond at this time.

More than a hundred people crammed Franklin’s Macon County courthouse to speak both for and against designating the county a “Second Amendment sanctuary” on Feb. 11, but the debate left more questions than answers and resulted in no action being taken. 

Haywood County’s financial position remains strong ahead of talks about next year’s budget, but a host of challenges will test commissioners’ resolve to keep spending low and fund balance high. 

Western North Carolina residents are now eligible for half-off tuition for all 2020 classes at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown.

It's February, which means Waynesville merchants are once again offering special discounts for locals the entire month of February. Look for the big red heart at participating downtown businesses.

Early voting is underway in Western North Carolina for the March 3 Primary Election. View sample ballots here:

The North Carolina State Board of Education recently voted to renew the charter for Shining Rock Classical Academy for another seven years. 

It seems like every year (and sometimes every month) there’s a new weight loss diet that makes the news. From the “Grapefruit Diet” and the “Cabbage Soup” diet where specific foods are eaten regularly to versions of low carbohydrate diets like Atkins and Keto and more recently some version of fasting. But will these diets work for you if your goal is weight loss?

The Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina has acquired 330 acres of what is expected to be a 651-acre project in Morganton. 

The Seed Library of Waynesville is now open, with donated seeds available for free of charge to members of the Haywood County Public Library. 

A years-long environmental assessment process is complete with the issuance of a final decision on the Twelve Mile Project on the Appalachian Ranger District of the Pisgah National Forest in Haywood County. Work will begin this year and continue for 10 years or more. 

To the Editor:

These comments are offered in rebuttal to a previously published letter. 

The first sentence in the letter states “The hysterical, savage, and frenzied attacks on President Trump by Democrats, the media, powerful deep state and political establishment has been going on since the day he was elected.”

I submit that this is partially true. I for one (not part of most of the groups mentioned and certainly not a member of the “global elite” because I don’t have any money) have opposed him ever since he lied and accused Obama of not being an American. Also, the attacks on Trump have been met with equal vigor and vitriol by Trump and his supporters. I note that Trump has plenty of heeled supporters who contribute generously to try to keep him in office.

What is totally true is that Trump is singularly unfit to hold public office. His countless lies, nasty rhetoric, misuse of his office, and traitorous behavior toward Russian interference in our electoral processes are clear (to cite Sen. Lamar Alexander). His views on global climate change are a threat to us all. His tax breaks for the wealthy (he promised to balance the budget — remember that one?) are increasing our staggering debt and will come back to burden our children. His trade efforts are hurting family farms and have yet to show positive results. He promised to bring back our industrial base and that has not materialized. His foreign policy supports dictators around the world. Further, Trump’s attacks on the “media,” meaning anyone who disagrees with him, are disgraceful and untrue because the “media” reports what he does (except for Fox News, which totally supports him) 

I only hope that there are enough Democrats and others to rid us of him in November.

Owen Rothberg

Waynesville

To the Editor:

I served two terms on Asheville’s City Council and am a former candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. In other words, I’m pretty engaged in electoral politics. I bring that experience to every election, evaluating candidates in light of their platforms and with regard to their personal commitment to ideas that I believe are in the best interest of our community, the state and the nation.

In this year’s congressional race in the 11th District Democratic Primary, I offer my full endorsement of Michael O’Shea. There is no issue more important to our collective future than addressing the global climate crisis. O’Shea fully supports the Green New Deal which is the only plan offered that has any chance of averting the life-threatening effect of our current policies. Further, O’Shea has endorsed Bernie Sanders, the only presidential candidate whose platform might move the United States toward economic justice, demanding that the wealthy pay their fair share.

Western North Carolina needs Michael O’Shea to represent our interests and to reverse the devastating efforts of Rep. Mark Meadows who has done all he could do to advance benefits for the rich during his years in office.

Cecil Bothwell

Asheville

The historic Shelton House in Waynesville is currently in need of volunteers for an array of upcoming events. 

CULLOWHEE – It is starting to get very busy for members of the Student Democracy Coalition at Western Carolina University. Led by students, the nonpartisan group engages faculty, staff and organizations across campus that are interested in increasing student civic engagement. And 2020 is a big election year, with local, state and presidential races at stake.

TOPTON – A rockslide has closed U.S. 19/74 in the Nantahala Gorge for the remainder of today and at least through the daylight hours on Friday. 

If you love to run and enjoy the scenic views of the Smoky Mountains, come out on Saturday, April 4, 2019 for a two-race event in Waynesville, N.C. The town will be abuzz with runners of all ages and skill levels. 

Do you grocery shop at Ingles Markets with your children? Sometimes this can be stressful and difficult to manage. Here are some ideas on how to keep kids engaged, learn something new… and maybe even lend a helping hand.

The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation will receive 100 free hours of public relations and marketing services as part of the Stand Up Initiative from Asheville-based Darby Communications and Status Forward. 

Tremont Institute is a finalist for an international education award in recognition of its Community Leaders Fellowship program. 

A 68-acre conservation purchase in Catawba County is expected to become part of the planned Wilderness Gateway State Trail, which is intended to meander thorugh Catawba and Burke counties and along the Rutherford-McDowell county line. 

Support wildlife in North Carolina with a voluntary contribution to the Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Fund on line 30 of the N.C. state income tax form. 

To the Editor:

Our N.C. House Rep. Joe Sam Queen is fulfilling every campaign promise he made two years ago. Here is the latest example, one that affects people, especially school-age children, here in WNC’s most isolated areas the most.

To the Editor:

Congratulations, by now the president has been acquitted of high crimes and misdemeanors. The Republican Senate has determined without any witnesses or documents that Trump had a “perfect call.” There never was any question about the facts, to quote Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, “It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation”.

By Mark Jamison • Guest Columnist | Some have called it the death of irony, the moment when Kenneth Starr, he of special counsel fame, stood in the well of the Senate and bemoaned the possibility that impeachment had become a partisan political tool. Then again, the gaslighting and Eddie Haskell-like pronouncements of cognitive dissonance by folks like Sen. Mitch McConnell have become normalized to the point where many are no longer horrified, just merely curious at what the scriptwriters of this perverse reality show that stands in for American political culture will come up with next. The emperor may have no clothes, but in the valley of the willfully blind who cares to notice?

By Steve Wall • Guest Columnist | Why do we even need any medical insurance programs or Social Security?

Well, because about 500 elderly folks in Haywood County are in nursing homes with their fees paid by Medicaid. And over 4,500 of our community’s children are enrolled in Medicaid. Virtually anyone over 65 gets their medical bills paid primarily paid by Medicare. And most people over 65 depend on Social Security to escape the poverty that threatened their  aging family members before 1936 and President Roosevelt. 

How’s your pickle knowledge?

A coalition of individuals and organizations came together to get river cane planted at Rivers Edge Park in Clyde this month. 

To the Editor:

Draw a Venn diagram. Circle one is morality. Circle two is ethics. Number three is law. As most people know morality is basically voluntary. Morality is the substance of individual and group conscience. Ethics is basically guidelines for certain groups of people who adhere to them voluntarily. Most groups establish some penalty for failure to comply. Neither of the first two behavioral guidelines listed above permeates all behavior in America. The law does. We are a nation founded on laws. 

The president of the United States has apparently ignored morality, ethics and the law for his entire lifetime. By virtue of his family’s wealth he has thumbed his nose at morality, ethics and the law with little total financial loss. Acquisition of money seems to be his only priority. 

This mode of operation has worked so long as he has been able to isolate “weaker” individuals and businesses. However, he has now entered into a legal agreement/disagreement with most Americans. Some will take his side because of party affiliation. Some want earthly power for their religious beliefs. The reality is, though, that most Americans want to see Donald Trump have to operate within the same legal framework as the rest of us. He is no more special than anyone else.

Since Trump should provide moral and ethical leadership befitting the Office of the President of the United States but refuses/fails to do so, we may have to tolerate that for a while. We should not have to abide his overt mocking of the legal system that makes America a beacon of democracy, civility, hope and freedom for the rest of the world.

If he is above the law, why do the rest of us have to obey? We have to agree to obey or we might as well shred the Constitution of the United States of America. We will either continue to be a beacon or we will extinguish the flame that Lady Liberty holds for all the world to admire.

Deep down, do you want a president who wants to be above the law?

Dave Waldrop

Webster

To the Editor:

I am constantly sickened by the rate at which our country is being driven into the toilet by the dishonesty, incompetence, and venality of this GOP administration.

These are terrible times for any thinking person. I so often feel appalled and disgusted at the caliber of this GOP administration’s actions.

The lying and slandering by this administration has to be stopped. It devolves to the Congress to demonstrate that America is in fact a place where the “rule of law” matters. I believe Congress should censure the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his interactions with National Public Radio’s Mary Louise Kelly during her interview, and his continued public attacks on her after the interview. That could be a start to the return of respect in political discourse, as well as to the restoration of a sense of representation of the people in our Congress.

Bill Aylor

Bryson City

To the Editor:

The hysterical, savage and frenzied attacks on President Trump  by Democrats, the media, powerful deep state and political establishment has been ongoing ever since the day he was elected. Most think this continual insulting harassment is because Trump is not a part of the D.C. club, is brash, outspoken, ignores political correctness, it was not “his turn” and he operates on a completely different style than the entrenched power politicians. These assumptions are true and valid, but the most dangerous and destructive anti-Trump cabal is the global elitists whose goal is a new world order. In the USA the global elite includes presidents Carter, Clinton, the Bushes and Obama and their new world order agendas that sells out American jobs, American workers and American sovereignty. Trump’s America-first initiative is a distinct threat to those goals of the new world order elitists who pull the strings of  governments worldwide. 

Everything President Trump has done defeats the power and profit of the global elitists. He pulled us out of TPP, the Paris Climate Accord and renegotiated NAFTA. He is securing the border threatening cheap illegal labor, imposed tariffs on China and just negotiated an initial trade agreement with China. These moves by President Trump are a grave danger to the global elitists that includes big business, big media, big finance and big government.

 It is no wonder that multi-millions of global elite dollars are funding the anti-Trump political agenda through dozens of front groups assigned to fight Trump’s reelection. Such groups are funded by  global elitists like George Soros, Hillary and Bill Clinton. For other names worldwide check out The Superclass List then  Agenda 21, Southern Poverty Law Center, Open Society Foundation and “philanthropic” organizations such as Arabella Advisors  whose “story” includes “helping clients whose promising ideas with the power to effect deep social change often require up-front capital.”  

Much to the dismay of global elitists, the new world order is under threat all over the world not only in the USA. Think Brexit, the yellow vests in France, populist governments in Hungary and Poland.  Leading the threat is President Donald J. Trump who fights successfully for the American people, our constitutional rights, liberties and the sovereignty of our nation. No wonder the global elitists have their sights on Trump and his defeat in 2020.

Carol Adams

Glenville

The Jackson County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors recently recognized Julie Spiro Donaldson for 20 years of service as the chamber’s executive director from 1999-present. 

Over the past decade or so, there’s been only one serious candidate willing or able to run for the District 119 House seat currently occupied by Waynesville Democrat Joe Sam Queen. 

The Jackson County Arts Council is proud to announce the 2020 T-shirt design winner is Josie Smoker. 

On Jan. 13, J Gabriel, Moonlight and Garbo, and Tia Dana presented the Haywood County Arts Council with a $1,200 check. 

At the annual meeting of the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre Board of Directors on Jan. 21, HART Executive Director Steve Lloyd announced the theater’s “Volunteer of the Year” would be Michelle Free. 

Tea time at Nettie’s Bakery in Waynesville raised $1,350 in support of the critically endangered red wolf during the inaugural event Tea Time for the Red Wolf Saturday, Jan. 1. 

George Ivey has joined the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation as the nonprofit’s new development officer. 

Haywood Community College 2019 professional crafts fiber graduate Hannah Mitsu Shimabukuro was recently named a Penland School of Craft Core Fellow. 

By Martin Dyckman • Guest Columnist | No one in America should be above the law, least of all the person most responsible for enforcing it. But there he is: Donald Trump, preening and posturing and scoffing at the Constitution like some latter-day Mussolini, his conceit inflamed by the Justice Department’s policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

Nothing in the Constitution or any law Congress made says so. 

To the Editor:

Have you a favorite president? I do, Harry S Truman (no period after the S). Truman was the first president I saw in person. In 1947 he campaigned from a caboose in my hometown (Haverhill, Massachusetts). It was after Labor Day, school had commenced, my third-grade class was at the railroad station to greet him.

Truman became president when Franklin Roosevelt died April 12, 1945, then won the presidency by defeating Thomas Dewey in 1947. One of Truman’s accomplishments, he made a sincere effort to introduce national health insurance.

Even in Harry Truman’s time (70 years ago) the deep-pocketed American Medical Association (AMA) opposed the program, wanting to protect physicians’ superior market power and professional autonomy. Then, as now, the AMA’s national network endeavored to stir up fear of “socialized medicine.” Opponents of universal coverage have relied on variations of that playbook ever since.

This is well-documented and you can verify these facts through study of William C. Hsiao, K.T. Li Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Hsiao most recently wrote on the subject for Foreign Affairs (Jan.-Feb. 2000).

Truman, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama all recognized the need of establishing effective, affordable health care. The fact remains, across the broad spectrum of health care, Americans pay more and get less .... Why?

The root of the problem (deferring to William Hsiao), as the United States became a prosperous, industrialized society in the early 20th century, it chose to treat health care as a commercial product rather than a social good, such as education. As a result, whereas government-mandated universal schooling was the norm by the 1920s, health care still remains primarily a private-sector commodity driven by the profit motive.

According to statistics (confirm them, please) 28 million Americans are uninsured and 44 more million are under-insured, contributing to an inequality in that the top quarter of American wage-earners live 10 years longer (on average) than the bottom quarter.

Finally, the flagrant fraud, waste and abuse driving up the price of health care, tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary spending year after year.  Hsiao tells us that a cottage industry has sprung up to advise hospitals and physicians how to game the claims system by fragmenting bills and “upcoding services” — exaggerating their complexity — in order to maximize payments.

Large providers employ workers whose primary task is to find ways to pad charges. Some hospitals and clinics take a blunter approach: they simply file claims for services they’ve not actually performed. It’s been going on for decades.

Some of us have experienced and reported irregularities over the years with only minimal success. Unless public attitudes shift drastically, we’ll never achieve full and affordable health care.

However, should American values and urgencies change and we decide we’ve had enough scheming and scamming, we have only to look to Canada, Taiwan, Germany, and a few other nations for guidance with systems that work.

David L. Snell

Franklin

To the Editor:

It is unbelievable that this quality paper can stand toe to toe with other publications and best them time after time. In fact, your news and list of events are much better than any Western Carolina paper currently published. I have lived all over the world and in a number of states but have not experienced the professionalism shown by your staff. There is writing and WRITING; you know the difference. Without your publication, we would be left out of timely news. I thought about writing this letter for some time but I finally got my thoughts in order. Keep on doing what you do so well and these Western Carolinians will continue being informed every Wednesday.

KG Watson

Maggie Valley

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians hopes to earn more than $1 million over 10 years by extending a $4 million loan to broadband provider Balsam West, of which it is a 50 percent owner. 

Whether you are following a vegan or vegetarian diet or just looking for a meatless or meat-free burger option for a quick meal, you will appreciate the selection of products you can find at your local Ingles Markets. 

On Monday, Dec. 30, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte published a list of several clergy the diocese found to have been “credibly accused” of child sexual abuse since the diocese’s creation in 1972. Of these clergy members, two worked in the 43rd Prosecutorial District in the 1970s and 1980s. 

As an ingredient, caffeine is found naturally in coffee, tea, mate and chocolate and is added to caffeinated sodas, some “energy” waters, coffee-flavored foods like ice cream and meal replacement bars, as well as candy, gum and non-prescription medications that have added caffeine.